Thursday, February 25, 2010

UNDETECTABLE!!!!!!

The doctor's office called me with the results of Victoria's blood work from Monday. Her viral load is UNDETECTABLE! I am so excited about this. While I knew that this is the ultimate goal with medication, I didn't expect it to be so soon. Victoria hadn't even been on the full dose of medicine for two weeks when we had her blood drawn on Monday, so I didn't expect this type of result until at least the next set of blood work. Needless to say, I am so, so happy! This medication that Victoria is on has been great. It is a very easy regimine and she has had absolutely no side effects!

Good question! The answer is yes, even a person with an undetectable viral load will test + for HIV with HIV tests. The reason is that the HIV test measures antibodies and the viral load test just measures the level of HIV in the person's blood. The person will always have HIV antibodies if they are +. Also, the viral load test only measures the amount of virus in the blood. The virus can live in body tissues, DNA, etc. The reason an undetectable level is good though is because it tells us that the medicine is doing what it is supposed to do. The virus in the tissues, DNA, etc. is sort of "dormant" and not in an active stage, so it doesn't affect the person's immune system. An undetectable viral load in the blood also makes things like skinned knees and bloody noses less of a concern because the chance of transmission decreases (although we will still always use caution in these situations).

Awesome! That was so fast. I'm amazed. I thought it takes a few months of treatment. So happy for you and V. I can tell how excited you are, and for good reason. Here's to a long happy healthy life with a normal immune system thanks to the meds.

About Me

My name is Jaime. I am wife to a wonderful husband, Joe, and mother to two beautiful daughters, Morgan who is 6 and Victoria who is 4. Victoria joined our family from Ukraine on Sept. 15, 2009. I started this blog for our friends and family to follow our journey to adopt our daughter from Ukraine. I am continuing this blog about our daily life and raising a child with HIV. Maybe in the future it will be used as an adoption blog again??????